Williams v. California

Issue: (1) Whether, as some courts have held, reviewing courts are required to accord “great deference” to unexplained Batson v. Kentucky rulings where the trial court does not demonstrate on the record that it has evaluated “all of the circumstances that bear upon the issue of discrimination,” or whether, in light of Snyder v. Louisiana and as other courts have held, reviewing courts should not defer to the trial court’s unexplained determination of a Batson objection; (2) whether a reviewing court may defer to a trial court’s Batson ruling where the trial court acknowledges that it is unable to independently evaluate the prosecutor’s contested, demeanor-based explanation and denies a Batson motion by simply accepting the prosecutor’s stated reason after observing that it comports with racial and gender stereotypes the judge believes to be true.